The Last Hope
by Siavahda
Summary: Once, the Cetra were a race of powerful and magical beings, the benevolent Caretakers of the planet. Now, they number only a few, tortured by humans but unable to die. They have only one chance to escape extinction...Escape their Hell. FF7 & 8 & KH xover.
1. Chapter 1

Hey everyone! So. This idea's been bugging me for about a year, and I thought I'd finally get it down. It won't be long, just two or three parts, and it's another of my drastic AUs. But hopefully not too hard to follow.

I'm currently working on the next chapters of Witch War and Darkness, so hopefully you'll get to see those soon. Thank you to everyone who's reviewed and messaged me! I love you guys so hard, you know that? Seriously. You are all awesome.

Anyway.

**Summary**: Once, the Cetra were a great and powerful race, magical and benevolent, the Caretakers of the planet. Hunted almost to extinction by the human race for reasons unknown, they now number only a double handful, all of them male, all of them imprisoned and enslaved. The one power that might save their people is the cause of all their suffering, for the humans want it, and want it badly, and will not let them die until it has been ripped from their last breaths.

To save their race, they have to escape their Hell...

**Characters**: Cloud, Squall, Zack, Angeal, Sephiroth, Genesis, Rufus ShinRa, Vincent, Sora, Riku

**Warnings**: Heavy slash, non-con, mentions of m-preg, AU

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_For five thousand years, we were the Caretakers. _

_We used our power, our magic, to take care of Gaia and all Her children; all the living things on the planet. We were the guardians, the teachers, the protectors, and the Friends of All. _

_Mankind called us the Cetra, after the ancient word for angels._

_We had our own laws, our own rules. Our magic was for the planet only, never for ourselves, for it was the only way we could keep ourselves from descending into hedonistic self-gratification, to rigorously deny our own desires, greeds, selfishness. We were a race who gave and gave and asked for nothing in return. Ever. We worked not for reward or thanks but from responsibility._

_Great power…_

_But for a reason none of us could see, the respect and love we earned turned to fear and hatred. It built and built within man's ranks, and nothing we could do could assuage it. They would not talk to us, would not fight beside us, would not grant us access into their homes and cities. We could not purify their water with our magic, or encourage their crops, or heal their sicknesses: they locked their gates against us and spat our names like curses._

_And then a human killed a Cetra child._

_We lived to serve the planet. But we are a race bound together more tightly than any other. We are not a people of numbers; our power comes with a price. It links us all together, gives us unimaginable abilities, but saps at our fertility. Each and every Cetra is precious, because we are so few. Strike against one of us, and you strike against us all. _

_We forgot ourselves; four Cetra warriors slew the man that had killed one of our own. _

_And the fragile knife-edge of tension exploded into war. _

_We never used magic against them. Not once. That power was only for the planet, only for the Caretaking. But we are a race of warriors. Mankind had seen us as beautiful angels for so long, they forgot the ancient battles we had fought for them against those aliens who would destroy them. _

_We took them by surprise. _

_Thousands, millions of them died. Every day, we sent messages of surrender, peace, apology. But they would not accept them, and would not meet us in straight combat: they sent some to fight our soldiers and others to seek out and destroy our homes, our non-combatants. They slaughtered our sisters, our mothers, our wives and our children, and we are not angels. We are mortal, with mortal loves and mortal hearts that broke with every name added to the lists of the dead. With everyone we lost. Until we thought no more of surrender and thought only of justice, and revenge._

_It went on for two hundred years. Without our magic, we could not destroy mankind completely and unless we did, we could not win. We could kill them in their thousands, but they were never going to give up, and no matter what they did to us, we would not, could not use our power against them. We would not sink that low, as low as they had. _

_We fought until we realised we had nothing worth fighting for anymore. Fought until it was only us, a few hundred soldiers left on the battlefield. Our clans, our families, our friends. Gone. Our lands, our homes. Gone. Our people._

_Gone. _

_When the news came, that the last Cetra city was no more, we looked at the army coming for us and threw down our swords. Some of us knelt down in the bloodied grass as we waited to die. We were broken men, without hope, without hearts. There was no more reason to live, and we gave ourselves up to despair. Stood defenceless, all of us, and waited for the humans to mow us down. We had no intention of resisting anymore._

_We never realised that that was exactly what they had been waiting for._


	2. Chapter 2

This may turn out to be a little longer than I origonally expected, though still only three or four parts.

Anyway. In case it's not clear - the Cetra/Human war ended fifty years before the present story. The little intro to this chapter/part is ten years ago.

To reiterate the warnings: there are mentions and implications of (underage) non-con and m-preg in this chapter. Don't like, don't read.

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1

_Ten Years Ago_

A voiceless wind caresses the plain, dust puffing up from the craters and chasms running across the earth. The scars running over the planet's skin are old – two decades old – but the two men on the crest of the hill can feel the pain in them as if the wounds were newly struck.

They are both dark haired, and they both stand straight and tall, bearing the weight of their great weapons with ease. But the younger man is embraced in an aura like soft light, as if bathed in the glow of another world's sun, and he draws the eye in some way that can not be put into words. He is simply _alive_, more fully alive than most people could ever dream of being. In a black and white world, he stands out in blazing colour.

And the world is very much black and white. On the hilltop, the two men can feel it, the not-so-hidden truth lying just beneath the surface of everything in their view. The dry, dusty rocks cry out their pain. The barren earth begs for water, baked and cracked with heat. Where there was once a roaring river, glorious in its power, there now lies only toxic sludge, poison and refuse from the city some hundred miles away. Poison that seeps through the river bed and into the earth, that the unforgiving sun dissolves into the air. They can taste it when they breathe.

The Lifestream is dying. Choked and tainted. Soon, there'll be nothing left.

2

_Present Day_

Sora stifled a cry as his handlers cast him on the floor, his small body curling in on itself as much as possible with his wrists locked to the collar at his neck. He skidded hard with the force of the throw; the loose white slacks and baggy shirt offered no purchase on the smooth floor, and his head slammed into the opposite wall.

His breath tore out of him in a pained gasp, and he fought back tears, vision blurring as the last forty-eight hours threatened to bubble up out of his throat in a mass of hysteria. He shut his eyes tight, struggling to stay in control of himself as his head blossomed into pain. His chest felt tight, but crying wasn't going to help.

Steps sounded, and he froze, his blood turned to ice in his veins. The keys on the handler's belt jingled as the man approached, and knelt down, and Sora couldn't choke back the small, scared sound as the smell of sweat and maleness washed over him. A month ago, he wouldn't have been able to smell it, and tears choked him again.

But he wasn't touched; the key met his collar with a quiet click, and it snapped open, his wrists popping free. Blood rushed into his hands painfully, and Sora gulped at the pain of it, moving instinctively to massage his wrists. He kept his eyes closed.

_If I don't look, I can pretend – it's not happening. This isn't real. Not real. _

_This can't be happening to me._

He swallowed his flinch when the man lifted him to his feet with a hold on his arm, but otherwise didn't move, didn't resist. After the last two days, he knew better. He hadn't even spent long enough looking directly at either of them – the one holding him and the one by the door – to even know their hair colours. He didn't dare.

"He's a bit young, isn't he?" Said someone behind them all.

Sora turned instinctively. Relief washed over him as the grip on his arm fell: it had been too tight, too hot, almost like a brand. He tried to quell the rush of hope that soared through him with the words, even with the wry, emotionless tone of them, but he didn't quite manage it.

_Maybe someone's finally realised I shouldn't be here!_

But the deep blue eyes that looked back at him were just as blank as the voice, not confused or horrified at his being there. But then, the new arrival had to be one of the legendary Cetra: his eyes were too rich, too beautiful for him to be human. Like sapphire stars – and just as hard and cold as gemstones… Sora had never been a very wordy, poetic person, but when he saw the man's hair he remembered the term _spun from gold_ in his mother's fairytales, and the silky spikes were like the rays of the sun in a child's drawing, all yellow and tall and jagged. And he shone; as if his skin was glass and some inner light burned inside him, shining out of him.

Sora still had hope, until he saw the man's clothes. The loose, baggy cotton trousers and shirt, all in plain white. The uniform they'd forced Sora into yesterday.

_Breeder_.

The thought alone was enough to make him seize up again, panic threatening to drown him because no, this wasn't right, couldn't be right! Maybe he was half Cetra but he wasn't a breeder, didn't have _any_ magic in him at all! They were wrong, all of them – they had to be!

_Please, goddess, let them be wrong…let me wake up, let it all be a dream._

Abruptly, the handler who'd picked him up shoved him forward, and Sora stumbled towards the blonde, stomach tight with fear. He didn't want to look up and meet those cold, dead eyes again, so he stared at the floor, shivering. The room was so cold, and his clothes were too thin to keep him warm…

"Old enough," the man – _the human_, Sora thought – at the door snapped. "Take him to the others, breeder, and make sure he knows his new place. His first visit will be in two weeks."

_Visit? What – what does that mean?_ Sora looked up and over his shoulder at the humans, confused and afraid. He wanted to believe that it meant he could visit his family, but the way he'd said it…His stomach clenched again, and he watched helplessly as the two men slipped from the room, the door locking shut behind them with a clang.

It echoed in his head. Echoed and echoed.

He heard a sigh, but he couldn't look away from the door, numbed. "They're coming back, right?" He heard himself asking, his voice strangely pitched. As if there was a crack running through it. "They're not gonna leave me here, are they? My – my mom, I don't think she knows where I am. I've gotta go home…"

He was startled out of his reverie by the hand on his shoulder, and he jerked, his hair whipping with the movement.

"Come on, kid," the blonde said quietly, and his eyes didn't look so blank now. Sad, and resigned. Emotionlessly, Sora thought that it might be worse. "Let's get you out of the cold."

Without protest, Sora let the blonde man lead him away from the first room. Unconsciously, he catalogued their surroundings: everything was white, and sterile, with almost no smell, as if he'd been locked up in a psych hospital instead of a Farm. There was a stink of plastic and heavy-duty cleaners, but none of it was natural – no plants, no homey colours like his mom used at home – and there were no windows. When they passed into a hallway, glancing at the doorway showed Sora that the walls were inches thick, and everywhere was washed in harsh fluorescent lighting, including the cold floor under his bare feet.

They saw no one else, and Sora wondered dully how long they'd been walking for. The place seemed like a maze: if the blonde was being guided by something, it was markers and clues that Sora couldn't see, and his eyes were better than a normal human's. Below the numb horror and confusion was a building sense of claustrophobia: his room at home was large and spacious, like this, but it was a _home_, with his bed and posters and his music collection, and the huge big window that opened onto the apple tree and the garden. His dad had helped him convince ivy to grow over one of the walls in his room, so it looked as if you'd walked into some kind of mad jungle. And the tiny little water fountain on his desk. Everything he'd craved, as part-Cetra, everything he'd needed to be happy and healthy.

There was none of that here. The mystery of it made him blink, and he looked at the blonde out of the corner of his eye. If Sora was only half Cetra, and already feeling the effects of being locked up – like a shaking, like all his internal organs shivering all at once – than how did this man, a full-blooded Cetra, cope?

He forgot his question when he heard it.

The blonde stiffened, but kept walking; Sora froze up completely, nausea and horror and a desperate urge to help crashing over him. It sounded like pain, like someone trying not to scream and only just managing it, someone who could barely breathe; and under it, the rough, hoarse grunts of an animal, and laughter, laughter like Sora had never heard, sick and disgusting and terrifying.

"What is that?" He demanded, turning his head, searching for the source of the sound. It was coming from through one of the walls, but he couldn't work out which… "Who's in there? We have to help!"

The blonde didn't stop walking.

"Hey!" Sora ran up to him and grabbed his wrist with both hands, forgetting that his own wrists were still aching dully from being chained. "Don't you hear that? Someone's hurt! We have to –"

"We will do nothing," the blonde said coldly, and his voice sent chills down Sora's spine, as if real frost were crawling over his skin. He let go, stunned. _What the hell?_ He thought, slipping a little on the smooth floor. The ends of his trousers kept curling underneath his heels, they were so long. _I thought Cetra were supposed to help people?_ He'd always been told that that was where he got it from, this instinct to help everyone he could: his Cetra blood. And he'd assumed that a full-blooded Cetra would feel it all the more… "Now come on. I don't have time for your sight-seeing."

_What sight-seeing? There's nothing to SEE!_ Sora grumbled silently, hurrying after the man – who hadn't stopped for a second in his walk down the hall.

It wasn't until later that he realised how the blonde had distracted him. Stopped him from thinking about the horrors, so he wouldn't have to face it yet. Not until he had to.

"So what do I call you, anyway?" Sora asked, trying for a smile. _I'm only going to be here for a while,_ he told himself, taking three steps for every one of his guide's. _I can at least be friendly._

The blonde paused. He didn't stop walking, or moving, but something in the way his face stilled made it seem as if he had.

"Cloud," he said finally, not looking at Sora. "But only in private, or with other Cetra. In front of humans, I don't have a name."

"That's weird," Sora commented, glancing around them. "And you know, I'm half human," he said proudly. _See? I don't belong here!_ He pitied Cloud, in that moment. He didn't know what was going on here, but it clearly wasn't nice. And when his mom came to get him, Cloud would have to stay… _I'll be real nice to him, _he decided.

"I noticed," Cloud said dryly. Sora wasn't sure whether that was meant to be a compliment or an insult, so he said nothing. "But Cetra enough to be a breeder," the blonde added, sounding as if he were musing aloud.

Sora bristled. "I am _not_," he protested. "This – there's been a mistake. When my mom finds out where I am, she'll come and get me." He looked at Cloud, daring him to say otherwise. His earlier fear was forgotten, because of course this wasn't _real_. If he wasn't dreaming, then it was a mistake, just a mistake. And mistakes got fixed. This one would, and then he could go home.

But Cloud didn't contradict him. He just sighed.

*

Eventually, the door Cloud opened didn't lead into another empty, bare chamber, or cold and dead hallway. Despite his best efforts at giving himself a pep-talk, Sora really was starting to feel ill in the closed, silent spaces of this building; he missed_ green_, and water, and the sky. If only there had been a window – but there wasn't, and he was hugging his chest tightly, trying to stop himself from shaking.

_Urgh…I feel so sick…_

But this room was a little better. It wasn't bare, for one thing: there were rugs strewn over the floor, almost exactly the same shade as the stone and therefore invisible until Sora stepped on one and felt the difference under his poor toes. They were thick but not overly soft, more like mats than carpets, and in a few of the corners there were people sleeping on them.

At least, he thought with a mental stutter, he hoped they were only sleeping. If they felt like he did, they could be sick.

_Or even…_

He stopped that thought before it finished.

There were no windows in here either, he noticed nervously, shifting from foot to foot as he followed Cloud across the room, not sure what else to do. They passed half a dozen sleeping forms – all men, he realised, and all of them wearing the same too-big white clothes that he was, except even bigger – before Cloud abruptly grabbed his wrist and pulled him down onto one of the mats.

He yelped with surprise, but the blonde clapped his hand over Sora's mouth and muffled the sound as if he'd expected the reaction.

"Quiet," Cloud said calmly, his voice gone all chilly again. "You don't know what these men have been through. They need their sleep."

Sora felt a strange little shudder in his gut, but nodded, and Cloud lowered his hand. They were close to one of the room's corners, but not in it, and away from the lights set in the middle of the ceiling it was almost shady. The headache that had been growing from all the brightness eased off as Sora crawled further into the shadow without thinking.

Cloud tossed a blanket at him. Sora caught it and stared at it, glad to see something that wasn't pale. It was a gorgeous red, bright as blood, but everything else in here seemed to be in varying shades of white, off-white, and cream, except for the hair and skin of the people (_the Cetra_, he reminded himself, _they're all Cetra_). What was the deal with that?

He opened his mouth to ask, but Cloud was already talking to someone else in a low, quick voice, a man on the next mat along. It didn't look as if he'd be getting any questions answered just now…But he wasn't tired. The blanket was soft in his hands – the first soft thing he'd felt for a while – but it wasn't enough to coax him to lie down and snuggle under it.

Would he even be able to sleep, without his bear? He hadn't had it in bed with him for years, but Mr Fluffles always sat on the shelf over his head, and now that he wasn't here…

The sound of a door opening drew his attention, and he glanced up towards it.

For a moment, he wasn't sure why the sight made him feel so sick: deep down, something primal and instinctive recoiled as a young boy stumbled weakly through a door – not the one he and Cloud had entered by, either. He looked only a little older than Sora, maybe fourteen or fifteen, with beautiful silver hair tumbling down over his shoulders. _Really_ silver, not white like old people's hair.

But he was naked. Completely naked. And he walked as if he was in terrible pain, as if his legs couldn't quite hold him up…Why was he naked? Awkward, Sora glanced away, his face burning. He'd never seen another boy naked before – except in Gym, and he'd never _looked_. And this, this was different. This was something awful and painfully private, he knew instinctively. Like an animal that needs to curl up in some dark corner to lick its wounds, that was how it felt… Like a small animal that had been caught in a trap, and escaped, free but in shock and bleeding to death…

The tension in the room sky-rocketed, and Sora realised that not everyone lain out on the mats was really asleep. _So why does no one go to him?_ He wondered, glancing back at the silver-haired boy, who had his lip bitten hard between his teeth, ivory face tight with pain. _Should I? I won't be here for long,_ he reminded himself nervously. _If I get in trouble, I won't have to endure any punishment for very long…_

Before he could decide, someone else entered the room – someone infinitely _bigger_, and Sora could feel power radiating off the man in waves. Rich, cloying magic that made him want to gag, or run away and hide.

He didn't look. Twelve years old, almost a grown-up, and he took the blanket Cloud had given him and hid under it, hid from that power. He stuffed his fist in his mouth and whimpered, unable to put his fear into words, his revulsion, the sickness. It was like the magic was rotting, tainted, spoiled like old fruit, and if he couldn't get any further away from it, if this was as far away as he could get, then this was where he would stay.

It made his skin crawl.

*

They all knew better than to go to Riku, but the few whispered conversations in the Clave died when the teen stumbled into the room, and Cloud felt his heart twist in aching sympathy, with longing to go to the boy and hug him tight, protect him from everything. But his features remained impassive.

Beside him, Reno's emerald eyes turned icy, like stained glass.

The Cetra were silent as the fourteen year old used the wall as a support, trying to get to his mat. His legs were shaking hard, and with Cetra sight Cloud could see the blood and come on the teenager's thighs from here, the bruises already beginning to form on the boy's hips and back.

Cloud's hands fisted at his sides.

They opened instantly when Sephiroth entered the doorway. If Cloud's face had been blank before, now it was a mask; abruptly he became a doll, empty and hollow, emotionless and thus, impossible to hurt. Beside him, Reno slid even further into the ice; all around the room, Cetra warriors went cold, descending deep into themselves to escape the poisonous crawl of Sephiroth's anti-magic, to numb their own pain and hatred at the sight of him. Their magic reflected that, and the room chilled. In seconds, a person's breath was completely visible on the air.

Sephiroth seemed unperturbed by his welcome, or lack of it; indeed, he smirked, his hair a waterfall of woven snow, spun starlight, as he stalked casually after his son.

Cloud felt nothing as Sephiroth's hand met the back of Riku's head, and the boy cried out, tumbling to the floor with the force of the back-hand, the casual blow sending him sprawling. It was the only way for them to survive, by going numb. Otherwise…

He didn't flicker as Sephiroth pulled Riku half off the ground by his hair, kneeling down beside the teenager. Cloud couldn't. He couldn't react, couldn't even feel as Riku's bloodied lips were crushed under the older man's mouth again, Cetra ears catching the boy's weak, pained whimper. The weak struggles were so useless, so pathetic that Sephiroth didn't even bother to grasp Riku's wrists to still him, but pulled away and laughed, shoving the boy back onto the ground with as much effort as Cloud would use to swat a fly.

They thought he would call someone else, but he didn't; after a glance around the room, Sephiroth slipped out the door and was gone, and the air warmed again almost instantly.

Reno pushed up off the ground and ran to Riku the instant the door closed, lithe and quick as a hunting panther. Cloud watched him kneel down, light hands running over Riku's body to search for injuries. Silently, Cloud worked on unlocking himself from behind the mental wall of ice, letting himself feel again.

"Who was that?"

Blinking slowly, Cloud turned his head to see where the new boy, chocolate spikes a little crushed by their excursion under the blanket, was looking at him. He didn't seem so confident now, Cloud noted numbly, still working on the locks and barred doors inside his head. It seemed a little sad, but was probably a good thing. In this place, hope killed faster than any kind of poison.

"Sephiroth," Cloud said dully, the word – the name – thick and wrong in his throat, on his tongue. Like blood and ashes. "That was Sephiroth. The Cetra prince."

Blue eyes widened, and the boy's head whipped to look at the door, now locked and bolted from the outside. "S-sephiroth? He's here?"

"He's a Cetra, isn't he? Even if only by blood," Reno sneered, answering for Cloud as he returned. Behind him, Riku was already fast asleep, silver hair smoothed and combed by Reno's fingers, his broken little body hidden under a deep blue blanket. "He didn't catch, yo," he said more quietly at Cloud, dropping himself down on the mat beside his blonde friend.

"Small mercies," Cloud murmured, flexing his fingers. He could feel the ice draining away.

Reno nodded, green eyes stained with pain. "Sephiroth's gonna break him sooner rather than later," he pointed out, still in that same quiet, subdued voice. Cloud remembered when Reno was one of the Clave's greatest warriors, firey and strong, a lightning-wielder. Technically, he still was those things, but imprisonment – enslavement – did something to a Cetra's psyche. They needed freedom, needed magic, needed to serve the planet.

Without that, they were broken.

A pang of pain lashed through him, and Cloud snapped more harshly than he'd meant to. "What do you want me to do about it? I can't keep Sephiroth's interest off him; the bastard's lost interest in me," he said bitterly. Not that he wanted Sephiroth's 'interest' – no one did, the twisted excuse for a Cetra was a sick, sadistic oath-breaker – but if he could have saved Riku some pain, he would have. His eyes went to Riku's sleeping form without his permission, and the pain that had dug its nails into him fourteen years ago throbbed.

_But it won't be long until he comes back to me. He always does. He'll leave Riku alone then…for a while…_

For a moment, none of them said anything. Around the room, Cetra were starting to wake up; their food would be coming in about forty minutes, going from the clock, and since it only happened once a day no one was willing to miss it.

"Excuse me?" Cloud glanced at the brunette, irritated, but the boy wasn't looking at him; he was eyeing Reno a little nervously. "What did you mean about Sephiroth, s-sir?"

Despite himself, Cloud's lips twitched, and Reno laughed outright. " 'm not a 'sir', kid," the red-head grinned, though the expression was laced with something bitter, something painful. Once upon a time, he had been – well-respected and well-loved. They all had been. "And – well, you tell us. What does the outside world know about Sephiroth these days?"

"And your name," Cloud added. "You know mine, and this is Reno, but you haven't given us your name yet."

"Sora," the boy said instantly, and Cloud wondered who had named him after the Cetra word for sky. "And, um…Well, he's a Cetra, right?" He looked nervous, unwilling to speak.

But the fact was, none of them knew anything. It had been almost fifty years since the South Wind legion – what was left of it – threw aside their weapons and opened their arms to death, waiting for the enemy to cut them down. Unequivocal surrender, because there'd no longer been any reason to fight. Camelot, the last Cetra city – already mostly abandoned, housing barely two hundred survivors from the massacre at Trevalion and the fifty South Wind soldiers who stayed behind to protect them – had fallen, blown to dust by human firebombs. The last member of the royal family, and the last two Cetra women – Aerith, a precious healer, and Tifa, a warrior who had only been kept off the front line because her gender made her too rare to risk any longer – had been lost with it.

Cloud remembered. They all did. Some kind of gas-bomb had been fired at the waiting soldiers, a paralysing sleep that caged them in their own minds, unable to move, to affect their bodies or reach for their magic – even if they'd been willing to use it. And when they'd risen from that captivity inside themselves, they'd been here, in the Institute.

No. They hadn't all been. Of the two hundred Cetra who had been on the battlefield, only twelve had woken to the sterile white prison, the coarse clothes that hung off them as if repelled by their skin. There was no way to tell if the others were caged somewhere else or if they'd been killed outright, at once, when the humans realised just how rare was the gift they sought.

Considering what use they'd been kept for, Cloud doubted that the others had been allowed to live.

Since then, their numbers had dwindled. Regardless of legend, Cetra were not immortal. They lived, they died. They could get sick and be injured, fall prey to accident and poison, be cursed and destroyed by their own power.

And there was only so much torture they could take, before they broke. Their human captors didn't understand that what they demanded simply wasn't possible to give. Cetra were living beings, not machines designed for only one purpose – not even 'breeders'.

Among the Cetra, they'd never been called _breeders_. They were the Blessed. It had been a gift bestowed on them by the Goddess Herself, honoured, respected, and cherished.

Now, Cloud and his kin called it a curse.

Be that as it may. In fifty years, the last Cetra had heard nothing of the outside world, nothing of any other survivors. They didn't even know which country they were housed in. Some of them had pieced together a vague outline of the human politics judging from the men and women who visited them – who had the _privilege_ of doing so – but there was no telling how accurate it was.

So it was impressive, that Cloud and Reno hid their impatience, and their hunger for knowledge, from their faces.

"He's Cetra," Reno confirmed, eyes hooded, expression unreadable. "By blood alone."

Sora looked at him curiously, nerves momentarily forgotten. "You said that before. What do you mean, only by blood?"

"It means that biologically, he's one of us." Reno answered for him, and on this topic Cloud was glad to let him do the talking. The more he could avoid thinking about Sephiroth, the better. "But he was exiled and forsaken before the war. Where it counts, he's human."

Seeing the blank look on the brunette's face, he elaborated.

"All Cetra are joined together by the Lifestream, the energy of the planet," he said quietly, and somewhere deep inside himself Cloud was amused to see his long fingers gesturing, imitating the ebb and flow of the glowing emerald Stream. "It's pure magic. And our power is that we can feel it and manipulate it, what separates us from humans. Connected to it, we can sense all other Cetra that are joined to it. We can work more powerful spells when we share our bonds and meld with each other." He smiled a little, but it didn't reach his eyes. They were hard and flinty. "That's what makes us Cetra, yo. We're born with that link, it's inside us. Without it, we're human."

"So…?" Sora asked, hesitant.

" 'Forsaken' means his bond was cut," Cloud said tonelessly. He knew his eyes had glazed, gone blank and cold, from the concerned look Reno gave him – but he didn't care. "He committed a crime. If he hadn't been a royal, he would have been executed. Instead, the Council stripped him of his magic and exiled him." _It's still there, hanging around him like a poisonous cloud. But he can't touch it – which means he can't touch _us_ with it, either._

"A crime?" Cloud was prepared to divert the boy from asking what Sephiroth had done, but Sora didn't look curious. He was blatantly disbelieving. "No way! Not _Sephiroth_. He's a _hero_, not a criminal!"

_That_ snapped Cloud out of his thoughts, and Reno's face contorted with a savage snarl, a vicious reminder that once upon a time, he'd been just at home in an animal's body as his own. "_What?_"

Sora quailed under the intensity of them both, clutching his blanket. In another time and place, Cloud would have felt sorry for him.

"Explain," he ordered instead. The sound of his own voice surprised him – as harsh and bare as an arctic wasteland.

"S-sephiroth," the boy stuttered, eyes focussed on Reno, obviously unsure of himself in the face of their shock and surprised that they didn't know what he was talking about. "He's a hero. He wasn't _exiled_, he _left_ the Cetra because they were – they were immoral." His voice grew stronger as he became more involved in his story. "And they were planning to use their magic to crush humans. Enslave them. He says that Cetra magic is vampiric and drained from humans, and that's why he never uses it." He glared at them, wary but so sure, so damn _sure_ and confident in what he'd been taught! "He saved us from being destroyed! If not for him, the Cetra would have –"

Cloud didn't even see his friend move, but suddenly Reno's hand was wrapped tight around Sora's neck and the boy was pinned flat on the floor, as stunned as the blonde Cetra at Reno's sharp bared teeth.

"Would have _what?_" He snarled. Cloud should have been interfering, pulling Reno off, but he could only sit stunned. Pieces of history, his old life and this new information were whirling through his head, like a puzzle torn up and thrown into the air of a storm, whipping and spinning. And then forced together. "Did _five thousand years_ of friendship mean nothing to you? We fought Jenova to protect you back-stabbing turncoats! When the plague came, it was _our magic _that saved you from dying like flies! We shaped the valleys for your cities and raised up mountains to protect you! We led you out of the dust and you – you –"

"Enough!"

*

Sora gasped in air as Reno retreated, pulled away by some new arrival. He didn't wait to see who it was: the boy rolled onto his side and then onto all fours, coughing hard and sucking in oxygen desperately. His lungs burned, and he could still feel Reno's fingers imprinted on his throat.

When he finally had his breath back, he choked on anger. Who the hell were these guys? Only _Cetra_, monsters who hadn't repented their evil ways and were rightly imprisoned and enslaved for it. It wasn't as if they could be allowed to wander free and do what they liked, could it? No. They were the last of their kind, just a little too precious to kill outright, so it made sense for the State to make use of them _somehow_.

But Sora was only _half_-Cetra – and no accident, either. Not like _these_ people. He was a State-sanctioned birth and his parents were paid almost a million gil every six months for taking care of him so well. He wasn't evil, he was _wanted_.

"What do you think you were doing to the boy, Reno?" A new voice said behind him. "No magic, and no fighting. We swore that together years ago. We're all Cetra here."

He didn't hear Reno's response.

"I'm _not_ Cetra!" He yelled, shoving himself off the ground and whirling on his heel. He was faster than other kids his age; he'd spun faster than one of his old friends would have seen. "I'm a _halfblood_! I passed my Humanity exam and I have _no_ magic! When I'm sixteen I'll go into the army because I'm wanted and trusted and _loyal_. I'm _nothing_ like all of you!"

Too late, he realised that the volume of his voice had gained the attention of more than just the handful of Cetra he'd met so far. His face flushed as faces turned his way from all over the room, more than half of them woken from sleep. He refused to look at them, to quail and back down: he kept his eyes focussed on the man who'd spoken and stood determined, daring someone to contradict him.

But the green eyes that stared back into his did so calmly, serene and peaceful, and it threw Sora for a loop. The man was taller than any of the others who'd spoken to him, and he carried himself with the quiet grace of a dancer. He smiled under Sora's examination and pushed his dark brown hair back from his face, where it hung past his shoulders in a glossy chocolate spill.

"Laguna, the kid's –" Reno began, but the brunette – Laguna? – raised a hand to quiet him: and, surprisingly, the red-head obeyed.

The unquestioning obedience made Sora wary, and worried that he'd just shouted at someone important in here. The Farmed Cetra were supposed to be tame, broken and biddable and magicless – but Reno had tried to strangle him, so suddenly he found himself wondering if any of that was true. But the State would never let them live if they were dangerous…

"I heard," Laguna answered, a thread of amusement running through his voice, and Sora's cheeks burned hotter. Of course – most of the room, if not all, had heard him. "But he is a child, Reno. It is not his fault. And I will not brook any violence, understood?" He broke his gaze from Sora to look over the other two, faintly disapproving in a way that reminded Sora of his favourite teacher at home.

"And now," he continued, his voice softening, "I would like to watch over Squall. So, please – no more interruptions. He needs a great deal of rest. Seifer was unusually hard on him." Something about the way he said it – tenderness and sorrow beneath that calm – made shame coil into a hot, tight knot in Sora's chest. He was the reason this Squall had been disturbed.

The words _I'm sorry_ choked in his throat.

*

Cloud instinctively glanced over to Squall's pallet, and nodded, laying a restraining hand on Reno's shoulder. "If you want to stay with him, I'll get both your rations," he offered quietly.

It gained him a dazzling smile from the older Cetra. "Thank you, Cloud. That would be very kind."

Cloud inclined his head. They all respected Laguna: he was the only one of them who had not been turned bitter by their capture, and none of them forgot that he was one of the rare Healers. He was one of the only reasons this many of them had lived so long. They owed him their lives, and his calm aura could soothe and gentle even Reno or Genesis when their minds threatened to descend into madness.

Laguna looked to Sora, and his face was expressionless. "I understand that this will not be an easy transition for you," he said quietly. "And I hope I can do something to make it easier. But please remember that the men here have suffered greatly. If you add to that suffering, you will not find allies among them. In this place, that would not be a good thing."

They watched him leave, and Cloud's heart throbbed to see the Healer kneel down beside his _leira_, graceful hand stroking Squall's hair with enough tenderness to bring tears to the eyes of a softer man. Squall's face, tight with pain even in sleep, relaxed as Laguna's touch banished the nightmares and hurts for a while.

He had to look away.

"So I guess we're stuck with you," Reno said suddenly, and Cloud closed his eyes, unwilling to take part in the conversation anymore. He heard Sora mumble something but didn't have the energy to translate it. "Welcome to the club, kid." There was a rustle of clothes, and he knew Reno had stood up. "Come on. I'll show you around. Introduce you to the pack."

Leaving Cloud to rest his head against the wall, trying not to think of his old life, the memories struggling to get free now that he'd seen that moment between Squall and Laguna. There was no privacy in quarters this close – all the Cetra shared this one room – but Cloud tried his hardest to ignore or avoid any displays of affection between mated pairs. It hurt too much to remember.

*

"- and, hey – sorry about your neck," Reno finished, gesturing at Sora's throat. His expression wasn't quite apologetic, but Sora figured it wasn't a fight he could win. Especially if what he'd been taught was wrong, and the Farmed Cetra weren't the meek, safe creatures the State said they were. Which Reno most definitely was _not_. "Just kinda snapped."

"I noticed," Sora muttered, but didn't push it. "Look, I'm really not meant to be here, you know? So, thanks for showing me around –" the communal showers and toilets, the locked doors that led to the 'visiting rooms' and 'wherever our food comes from' "- but it's not necessary. They'll be sending me home soon."

"Kid…" Reno ran a hand through his vibrant, messy hair. "Come on. Sit down. I think someone needs to explain things to you."

That didn't sound good, but Sora suppressed his unease and sat. The floor was cold, and he scooted over onto an empty pallet instead as Reno settled himself on the ground. This corner of the room was empty – the room was a good size but there were only eight people, including him, to share it, and most of the Cetra seemed to gather together along the other side. Aside from those he'd already met, Reno had given him a brief introduction to Tseng and Genesis, a steely-eyed pair that were like ice and fire, respectively, and explained that Squall, the man Laguna had mentioned, and Riku, whoever that was, were both out for the count at the moment. _You can meet them both later._

Reno ran his fingers through his hair again. "Don't know what you know about us, kid, or what they tell you outside. Fact is, all of us here – well, humans call us breeders." His green eyes were piercing. "You know what that means?"

Sora shrugged, uncomfortable and trying not to show it. "Sort of. Cetra aren't very fertile, so the strongest male mages can use magic to become pregnant too."

The man's lips quirked at the corners, a wry expression that left his eyes shadowed. "Almost. It's not a spell, it's just something we're born able to do. Well. There's two kinds of Cetra – mages, and stream-singers. Everyone here," his gesture took in the room, "is a stream-singer. That's the only reason this city is still standing."

He said is calmly, casually, a statement of fact; but it felt like ice-cold water had just been dumped over Sora's head. _What…?_ Cetra weren't that strong, that powerful…Sephiroth…his teachers…they'd all said…

"You said you shouldn't be here, 'caus you don't have magic," Reno was saying. "Well, sorry kid, but that's a stream-singer. We _don't_ have it. No spells, no hexes, no nothing. Can't even make a ball of light. What we have instead is a two-way connection to the Lifestream. A mage can tap into the Lifestream and use it's power for his or her spells. A stream-singer senses where the land or Lifestream isn't healthy, and fixes it."

"Fixes it?"

Reno's sharp eyes glanced at him. "Yeah. Fixes it." For a moment, he said nothing, and Sora thought that was all the man would tell him. But –

"When a stream-singer's in a desert, or a poisoned place, we fix it." He said quietly. "We 'sing' to the Lifestream, coax it into the dying land and heal it. And when the Lifestream itself is poisoned or failing, we can filter it through our minds and hearts and purify it again."

The moment of – seriousness, reverence, vanished as soon as it had come, and the red-head was once again a cocky, irritating – and kind of scary – bastard. "And since we're so rare, and stream-singers are only ever born to –singers, both sexes can get knocked up. Our magic takes the come of our partner and merges with it, and makes an ickle baby Cetra right here." His thin fingers splayed over his abdomen. "There's no girl-bits involved, thanks very much." He must have discerned Sora's expression. "The thing grows in a kind of cocoon of magic real quick, about half the time of a human pregnancy. When it's ready, the cocoon starts to crack open. We can feel that, so we know to get a caesarean damn quick. If we don't get someone to help, we'll just split open. Not pretty. Sometimes fatal, in fact. If we're lucky, the magic from the cocoon melts into us and heals the big gaping wound splitting us open. It doesn't always. That's why it's better to have a Healer on hand. Only way you know for sure you'll live through it."

He clicked his tongue, but Sora sensed that the man's blasé hid private emotion. "There's six of us that could actually get knocked up right now – you and Riku are too young – but there used to be more. Originally, there were twelve of us. The others died. Wouldn't have, but they got pregnant and told 'Guna they didn't want his help at the birth, so he didn't Heal them when the docs told him to." He looked thoughtful. "Not a nice way to go."

Sora thought he was going to be sick. Reno's description hadn't been all that graphic – he'd read worse in murder mysteries – but the images shone bright and vivid in his head, nausea clawing at his throat as his hand dropped to his stomach. He forgot to even wonder what Reno meant about Laguna, too caught up in imagining a living thing growing inside him.

Sick. He was going to be _sick._

" 'Course, the reason the humans're interested is 'caus when stream-singers – sorry, _breeders_, give birth to mages, the kids are super-strong," Reno continued. "About fourteen times faster, stronger, smarter. Their magic's just _unbelievable_. Like, scary stuff. And the scum want that, want them kids for their armies. Like you were talkin' 'bout earlier. Think if they can get their hands on 'em young, they can turn 'em into super-soldiers."

That reminded Sora of something, and he shook his head weakly. "N-no, it's not the army," he forced out, trying to choke back the roiling feeling in his stomach. "That's for halfbloods. The ones with magic, they're – the State wants them to heal the planet. Global warming and everything."

"Really?" He looked genuinely shocked for a moment – and then he laughed. "Oh, those stupid bastards! I just told you – only stream-singers can do something like that! Mages can't heal the land if they sing for centuries. Won't get so much as a spark." He shook his head, and Sora just couldn't decipher the man's expression. "Gods, it's priceless. The planet is dying 'caus they've killed all the singers – and to save it they'd have to let us go."

"But – wouldn't you do it anyway?" Sora asked a little desperately. It was kept hidden from most kids, but as a halfblood he'd overheard conversations between adults when the State scientists took his monthly check-up. The planet really _was_ dying, and though it was kept out of public knowledge – understandably, since it would cause panic among the masses – the State guessed there was only fifty years or so before it became impossible to support human life.

Of course, Sora had been raised to be sure that the State would somehow find a solution for the problem – but if they had the Cetra right here, able to heal the earth, to fix it…

"Of course we would."

Sora whirled, jittery and on edge from all the new knowledge and its implications – for the State, for the world, for _him _– and though it somehow didn't surprise him that Cloud was standing there, the silence with which he'd approached was more than a little unsettling.

_Is it a Cetra thing? Could I learn how to do that?_ He thought suddenly, unbidden. Why would he want to learn _anything_ from these people?

"We were this planet's caretakers before humans were the seed of an idea in Gaia's mind. No matter what they've done to us, we would never take it out on the world." His eyes were chips of ice set in marble, and somehow looked regal and strong, even in the clothes of a prisoner, arms crossed over his chest and the too-large sleeves sliding the shirt off him and baring dark, mottled bruises on his shoulder. "But we can't."

"Why?" Sora demanded. "Either the Cetra are incredibly powerful magical _things_, or you're just what everyone says you are. Which is it?"

Cloud snarled, and it was – it was so inhuman, so low and savage and _vicious_ that Sora flinched away, accidentally backed into Reno in his desperation to get away from that _sound_, the eyes blazing like the sea in a storm.

"Keep your voice _down_," he hissed, and the young boy winced again. "It won't be said again!"

Reno's hand curled on Sora's shoulder, and his voice was uncharacteristically solemn. "The Lifestream's all things natural, kid. Earth and air and water. It's in people, and animals, plants…everything. Outside… But you shut a singer up in a block of synthetic crap," and he gestured again, not at the people this time but the endless white plastic and cement that made up the walls and floor, without windows and the only source of air two vents at either end of the room, blowing in a stream of cold, scentless air, "and we – they can't breathe. Can't touch the Lifestream if it's not around. The air is filtered, the water in the showers is sterilised, there's nothing natural about the room…"

"So you're powerless," Sora said without thinking, something like disappointment and confirmation mingled. "You can't do anything."

A pause.

"Yeah," Reno said finally, shoving Sora away from him – but not towards Cloud – with a shove so casual Sora knew it hid some deep emotion. "Fucking useless. We're only here to _breed_."

It didn't make sense, though, and Sora wanted to ask – was still so full of questions – but he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answers. Despite what Reno had said, despite what he knew about his 'distant relations' – because that's what they'd been called, these Cetra, these _things_ that were kept out of sight of the public, for the good of the public, their evil powers drained away but some important use got out of them _for the good of the public_ – they were his 'distant relations', nothing more, like chimps and monkeys were vaguely linked to humankind – despite all that, he couldn't bring himself to really believe that the State bred Cetra like animals. _(Because they weren't animals, his teachers were wrong, the State was – wrong, maybe, somehow, because animals don't speak and don't think and don't have emotions like Reno and Cloud and Laguna do)._ The State was concerned only with the greater good, it cared for the people and looked after them and everything it did was for their good, their happiness. If these stream-singers couldn't heal the planet, then either the State would kill them as being useless (and a drain on public resources, on taxes) or give them some kind of limited freedom, keep them under control and still make them do this singing thing. The mages that came out of the 'breeding program' were vital in the way that nuclear weapons were vital: they were threats, powerful threats that kept people without them in line. No other city-state had loyal Cetra mages, just like no other city-state had been deemed worthy to house Sephiroth. But they could be dispensed with. The mages. Maybe.

Maybe? Wouldn't the State have ended this long ago if it wasn't important?

He looked from one carefully blank face to the other. All of this – all of it was strange. And, maybe, wrong. He wasn't supposed to be here, but it didn't seem like the fullblooded Cetra should be either. Even if Reno was scary… What had he said? _We can't breathe._ He tried to imagine being locked up in this sterile room forever – being forced to carry a baby inside him, even when he didn't want to – and couldn't. It would be…

_We can't breathe._

He felt so uncertain. So unsure. Up until all this, his life had been simple and clear and easy, uncomplicated. He'd had no real magic, so he would never be called to the army or to try and fix the planet, but he'd had enough Cetra in him to feel so blissful stretched out in the sunlight, in the garden, swimming. But now everything was – different, and he was trying to be brave and face up to these strangers – _Cetra, they're full Cetra,_ his mind whispered at him – but inside…

_I want my mom._

"Why am I here?" He asked quietly, hesitantly. It stung his pride a little to see their faces soften, unlooked-for understanding making the green and blue of their eyes a little less sharp-edged.

"You really don't know?"

The new voice purred, so different to Reno and Cloud that it vibrated over Sora's nerves like a plucked steel cord. He turned his head, and he recognised the face – Genesis, Sora thought his name was, with hair like dulled amber and copper, a full mouth twisted with something cruel. He looked a bit like a girl, though of course he wasn't one – and they were all male, Sora realised suddenly, why was that? – but his face had that kind of androgynous look that the others simply didn't have. And for all that Cloud seemed to look down on everyone else from a great height – the top of an unconquered mountain, where it was lonely and cold but somehow safe – Genesis' eyes were colder.

Crueller.

"Genesis," Cloud said warningly, softly, but the other man gestured as if shooing away flies, and ignored him. Reno said not a word, and standing in front of him Sora couldn't see his face.

"He needs to hear it sooner or later, doesn't he?" The soft, almost genteel voice asked, laced with mockery and some other emotion Sora couldn't pinpoint, couldn't quite name.

Cloud's hardened, but he said nothing more as Genesis – with that same regal air that Cloud had – went down on one knee so that he and Sora were at almost the same height.

"Darling little one," he murmured, almost smirking but not quite reaching it, "You're here so that Sephiroth – or one of his sons, or the other switchers – can fuck you until you catch." He didn't pause for Sora's reaction. "They will use your body like a toy, and then like an incubator, and if you are unlucky enough to fall pregnant by any one of them, you will know the exquisite agony of having your child taken away from you and raised to hate you and everything you stand for. You cannot fight them, you cannot even resist them; in short, you are powerless." His bright blue eyes watched Sora's, but the boy was frozen in shock and horror and disgust. "What lies ahead is decades, possibly centuries, of rape and degradation and forced impregnation. You'd better get used to the idea."


	3. Chapter 3

So, a few more clues scattered here and there. I hope you guys pick them up!

* * *

3

"Sergeant Fair."

"Sir?" Zack threw up a shield that blocked his opponent's stream of bullets as he turned his attention to the General and away from Yazoo, trying to quell his nerves. It was unusual for Sephiroth to come down to the training rooms while there were other Cetra using the facilities, but not unheard of. And there were so few State Cetra that they had all, at one time or another, come into contact with each other.

But Zack had never been one of Sephiroth's confidantes, or even his friend, and the other's forsaken magic made him uncomfortable. In the ten years that his memories encompassed, he and Sephiroth had never been closer than the passing on of orders necessitated.

His shield shimmered like sunlight on ice, a crystalline bubble, while he waited for Sephiroth to continue. The unwavering green stare was unnerving, but Zack refused to show it; he straightened up under the inspection, swinging his blade up and over his shoulder until it clicked into place on the magnetic sheath, and took the rare opportunity to look at his General full on. With jewel-bright green eyes with the cat-slits of the Forsaken, Sephiroth was tall, his body defined with graceful sweeps of muscle that could have been drawn by an artist's brush. Zack might have privately believed his waterfall of hair was the colour it was – spun moonlight – because of his forsaken status, but the colour had passed on to all four of his sons, none of whom had any problems with their magic.

Sephiroth raised one crescent-moon eyebrow and, startled into remembering the proper etiquette, Zack dropped down onto one knee, bowing his head and ignoring the pride that bristled at kneeling to another Cetra. It was, Sephiroth has once explained, a remnant of his old life, and not something that he should pay attention to.

There were many things buried deep in his psyche that Zack had learned not to listen to.

"My apologies, General – I don't know what came over me –"

Sephiroth waved his gloved hand, dismissing Zack's prostrations. "Apology accepted, Sergeant. Please." He gestured for Zack to stand, and Zack did so. This time, he kept his hands clasped meekly behind his back, awaiting instruction. After a decade of working to conquer his instincts and muscle-memories, he could safely ignore the voice that said Sephiroth should be the one on his knee for Zack, not the other way around.

"Sir?" He asked again, keeping his voice respectful.

Sephiroth made another elaborate gesture, his eyes never leaving Zack's face. "Due to unforeseen events, the President has asked that you be added to the rota for the breeding program. I have given my permission, and expect you to accompany me to the –grounds at oh-eight-hundred hours tomorrow morning."

Zack froze, and he wasn't sure that his instinctive recoil hadn't flickered across his expression.

"Yes, sir," he choked out, struggling to remain in control of himself. Cetra were possessive, sometimes violently so, when they claimed a mate or sexual partner, and since each of the other State Cetra had claimed one of the breeders – or several of them – with none left over, Zack had never expected to be called on to 'do his duty'.

No, be honest. He'd hoped and wished and prayed that he'd never be called on.

But evidently he must have kept his reaction sufficiently quenched, for Sephiroth only nodded, bid a brief greeting to his son Yazoo, and swept out of the room again.

When Yazoo and Zack resumed their duel, Zack's shield shattering in a blizzard of shining crystal pieces and his blade swinging like a bolt of lightning, it was with more viciousness than he had ever felt before.

*

A few hours later, as Zack was coming out of the communal showers attached to the training rooms, he was forced to remember tomorrow's activities when he ran into Seifer in the locker room.

For some reason he'd never quite put his finger on – though possibly related to the shadowy whispers and instincts that whirled below his consciousness – Zack had never managed to click with most of the other State Cetra. Sephiroth was the only Forsaken among the small group, but they all carried the sense of taint, of cloying sickness that made Zack want to walk in the other direction. The State and his position as Sergeant were the only things Zack could remember, but somewhere inside he felt the urge to rebel against the system. He resented being a tool for humans, hated bowing and scraping to them – loathed and despised the breeding program, which sickened him.

Judging from the smell on Seifer's skin, the breeding-grounds were where he'd just come from.

Clenching his jaw, Zack slammed the door of his locker, pulling on his shirt and combats with restrained intensity. He refused to look up as the blonde stopped in front of him.

"What crawled up your ass and died?" Seifer asked, raising an eyebrow. He stank of sweat and sex – and fear and pain, telling Zack all he needed to know about the state of 'Seifer's' breeder. The smell wasn't Seifer's, but another Cetra's pheromones, pressed into his skin the same way Seifer had pressed the man down and open.

His eyes, Zack knew when he looked up, were bright and boiling with hate and disgust.

"Woah." Seifer backed up, holding his hands up in a placatory gesture. "Chill, Fair. Hyne, you ever thought of signing up with the program? All that unreleased tension isn't good for y– "

Zack's fist smashed into Seifer's jaw.

It took the combined efforts of Kadaj, Yazoo and Loz to pull Zack off of the blonde nearly twenty minutes later.

"It's fucking _rape!_" He yelled, struggling against Loz's hold while Angeal worked a healing spell on the prone Seifer's face. "How can you stand there and talk like it's some kind of fucking _stress-relief_? Son of a _bitch, _let me _go!_" This to Loz, who was still pinning Zack in his arms as if the smaller man were no more than a doll.

"_Enough!_"

Instantly, the whole room froze. Loz dropped Zack like a hot coal as Sephiroth appeared in the doorway, green eyes blazing with fury and Masamune in his hand. No one else hesitated in falling to one knee, the traditional bow – but this time, Zack couldn't make himself compliant.

He stood there, hands fisted and literally shaking with hate, and only just managed to keep his eyes hidden behind the still-damp spikes of his hair. He knew the sky-blue was glowing: he could feel his magic crackling through his blood and over his skin, threatening at any second to explode. Even now, he wasn't so lost in emotion that he didn't know such a display of defiance – shoving his magic in Sephiroth's face – would have him whipped.

_But I will not do it. I won't!_

They were all silent as Sephiroth approached, ignoring the others to stand directly in front of Zack.

"Sergeant."

Zack didn't move. He was too busy fighting the desire to punch the General, too – which wouldn't get him a cat-of-nine-tails, but a firing squad.

"Sergeant Fair."

When he still didn't react, Sephiroth reached forward and tilted Zack's chin up with two fingers, the leather smooth and supple against Zack's skin, and against his will he was drawn up until their eyes met.

There was silence as the collective group held its breath, but when Sephiroth finally spoke, his voice was so low that, even with Cetra hearing, his words were only for Zack.

"Is this childish display a response to the President's wishes?" He asked softly. The slits of his eyes seemed even more monstrous close up.

"Yes, sir," Zack answered, unable to hide the flurry of emotions whirlwinding through his eyes, across his face.

A pause. The air felt heavy, choked with words unspoken. There was something in Sephiroth's eyes – like satisfaction, as if he'd been waiting all along for Zack to snap and was pleased he finally had.

As if his next words were ones he'd been waiting to say for a long, long time.

"You will obey, or you will join the breeders." Sephiroth said coldly, but with that smug spark in his gaze. "I have no use for soldiers who will not follow orders."

Zack physically recoiled, but the grip on his chin merely tightened, holding him, trembling with fury and disgust, in place.

With the breeders? But – Zack didn't have that ability. No matter how many times he slept with another man – and gender simply wasn't relevant to Cetra, not sexually – he couldn't get pregnant. It was about as likely as a human male doing so.

"Since I don't have that gift, how would you justify it?" He asked softly, letting his eyes fall again. "Or would you really sentence one of your men to a lifetime of rape?"

Silence.

"Twenty lashes," Sephiroth said coldly, loud enough for the rest to hear as he shoved Zack away with enough force that his back hit the lockers with a bang. "Then a night in solitary. Assign him to subject 4 for tomorrow. If he doesn't complete his duties, enrol him as a subject."

He didn't see Zack's expression as he turned around and left them again, but Zack was sure he could feel the sergeant's hatred burning into his back.

*

Zack could feel the disappointment bleeding out of Kadaj as Sephiroth's son let him down from the whipping post. Despite the fact that the whip had bitten deep into his back, Zack hadn't cried out once, though the leather thongs tying his wrists to the posts had chafed and raised blisters.

He shoved Kadaj away and got to his feet on his own, without letting a hint of the pain show; his legs were steady as he made his way back inside for another shower, this time to get the blood off.

Cetra bodies healed fast, but not so quickly that his breath didn't hiss through his teeth when the hot water fell on the deep lashes. Kadaj and the others of the General's brood were strong – stronger than other Cetra – which was why Sephiroth called on them to dole out punishments. It showed; Zack was pretty sure that, strictly speaking, he needed a healing spell. Now that there was no one to impress, he leaned heavily against the tiled wall, resting his forehead against the cool stone; his body trembled with the effort of keeping himself upright.

He used the pain to distract himself from the knowledge of tomorrow.

"Zack?"

It was Angeal's voice, so Zack didn't straighten or turn around. Of all the other Cetra, Angeal was someone he trusted, even respected.

"Hey, angel," he joked. Angeal's preferred method of fighting involved white wings and attacking from the air like one of the Seraphim; he was so far from the angels that went on the tree at Christmas that Zack just had to tease him about it.

"Puppy," Angeal answered, but beneath the wry amusement he heard the concern. It was a measure of how much Zack trusted him that he didn't flinch away when the older Cetra stepped under the showerhead with him, apparently not noticing that his clothes were getting soaked. The man's hand rested on his shoulder, and Zack sighed, just a little, drawing comfort from the touch.

"You need a spell."

Zack turned his head to meet the other's eyes. "If I use one, Sephiroth'll only make me go through it again."

Angeal raised an eyebrow eloquently. "You won't be able to perform if you can't move."

Pain flashed through him, not from his back but from the orders that were choking in his throat, and Zack looked away again.

"I can't do it, Angeal," he said softly. "I can't."

The older man didn't say anything. The soft, cool touch of a healing spell washed over the lashes, closing broken skin and soothing bleeding muscle, repairing the damage, and Zack rested his forehead against the tiles again, breathing a quiet sigh of relief as the pain faded away.

"I need to get to solitary," he said finally. He tried not to be disappointed: there was nothing Angeal could do or say to change the situation. "If they let me out in time, I'll see you in the canteen for breakfast tomorrow." Angeal wouldn't be going with him to the breeding-grounds; he had no ability to perform sexually and would be useless in the program. When Zack had asked him about it, he'd explained – in short, clipped terms – that he was lifebonded, joined magically to his one-and-only, his other half, and part of that meant his interest in anyone else, physically, was severely dulled.

Zack had not asked where his mate was. Though he didn't remember it, he knew there had been a war – and lifebonds were not negated when one half of the pairing died.

But as he turned the water off and reached for his clothes, not caring too much that he was still wet, Angeal's hand caught his shoulder.

"Puppy," he said quietly, urgently, "stream-singers don't have magic like we do – but they do have one power, one gift the Lifestream allows them in order to protect themselves." Zack stared at his mentor, confused and shocked. What he was saying – it went against everything he knew – and the urgent, desperate look in Angeal's eyes –

"Angeal…" He said softly, worried. He had never seen the older Cetra look like this; he had always been like a rock in his steely serenity. But now he looked – almost wild –

Angeal shook him. "Listen!" He snapped. He held up a finger on the hand not holding Zack. "_One_ power. _One_ gift. It's different for each of them. They need access to the Lifestream to use it, just like mages." He cut off Zack's words with a hiss. "_Listen!_ One of them _doesn't_ need it. He can use his magic, still."

Zack's eyes widened, and he couldn't speak. A hundred and one thoughts flashed through his brain in milliseconds, because maybe no one had ever seen one of the breeders use magic – but if it was anything like what a mage could do…

Wait. If this breeder could use magic, why was the city still standing?

"He doesn't know it." Angeal answered the question before the younger man could ask it. "He doesn't think what he does is magic. But it _is_. You have to tell him, Zack."

"You're talking like a crazy," Zack protested in a quiet hiss. If anyone overheard them – Gaia forbid. He wasn't an idiot, he knew what Angeal was implying. Any Cetra with magic could break out of the strongest human prison. If a single one of the breeders learned that he had magic – real magic, real power – they would all get loose.

And conspiring with non-State Cetra was treason. Punishable by execution.

Angeal shook him again, hard enough to make Zack's teeth rattle. "_Tell him,_ Zack."

"Okay, okay. I'll tell him." Zack soothed, running his hands over Angeal's shoulders. He wove a light calming spell between his fingers, but his mentor shrugged the charm off with his own power.

"I mean it, Zack. You have to do this. Tell him, make him understand. He can end this, all of it." The Sepharim-warrior's eyes were glowing, magic and wild urgency. "I won't be here for much longer. I have to go." He hesitated, and Zack didn't understand what was going on – today had been so crazy – so strange – and he was afraid, something was screaming at him from behind the block in his memories –

"Angeal, what –"

Angeal leant forward and kissed his brow, still damp from the shower – and Zack froze at the familiar gesture, his stomach gone cold and tight. For so long, ever since he woke on the outskirts of Midgar with nothing more than the clothes on his back and his name, Angeal had been his guide, his only safe place in a world that seemed so wrong. The only father he'd ever known.

"No," he whispered, a trickle of dread growing by the second as he clutched at Angeal's shirt, understanding, knowing, "no, Angeal, don't go – please don't –"

"Tell Cloud to believe," Angeal said quietly. "And –" His face tightened, and the smile didn't reach his pained eyes. "Tell Genesis he hasn't been forgotten."

Zack was speechless, struck dumb. "Please," he whispered desperately, "Angeal –"

"You'll do just great," Angeal promised – and he smiled, an expression so genuine and warm and full of pride that Zack just didn't know what to do with it. "I'm proud to call you my prince, Zack."

"_What_?"

But then Angeal's fingertips touched Zack's forehead, and he was too shocked to shield against the spell glowing dark blue on them –

He thought he remembered Angeal catching him as he fell, keeping his head from crashing against the tiles – but then it all went black.

4

Sora refused to let any of them touch him.

Cloud wasn't all that surprised. The boy hadn't been fucked yet, but fearing it, knowing it, _waiting_ for it – that was always the worst part.

Until you got used to it. Until you became resigned to it, and realised how much further you'd managed to fall.

He shoved the thoughts away. His empathy, sympathy, would not help Sora. Nothing could help the boy now. Genesis had been viciously cold, but he was right. The sooner you accepted it…

Except that none of them could accept it. Not really. Not in their hearts. They could make their bodies limp, and they could close their eyes; but if ever a chance had presented itself – to injure one of the traitors, to kill then, to _escape_ – every single one of them would have fought for it tooth and nail.

_One drop of water…one crumb of earth...one breath of fresh air…_

His stomach clenched with longing, and Cloud forced himself not to follow that trail of thought. Because that was all they needed. One tiny speck of Lifestream, and together they could burn this building to the ground, and whatever city encompassed it. Stream-singers of both genders were child bearers by necessity – for every nine hundred mages, there was a single stream-singer, and their abilities over the Lifestream were so precious that they could not be allowed to die out under any circumstance – but that did not mean they were pampered housewives. All Cetra received training in _savage-chi_, the Cetra martial art form, as children, and few gave up that training upon reaching adulthood – and stream-singers were no exception. _Savage-chi _was an art, and like all arts was highly prized. The Cetra had been, on the whole, a peaceful race but the warrior class was a revered one. No one forgot that it had been the masters of that class who had defeated Jenova and her alien armies so many centuries ago.

And there was the stream-singers' great secret.

They were incapable of casting spells. Without exception, stream-singers could not cast even the most basic charm, no matter their skill over the Lifestream. But – and this was known to so few that even before the war, the royal house itself had not known – Gaia had not left the stream-singers defenceless. To each was given a single, unique gift, a power that was not magic but something deeper still.

Cloud glanced around the room, cataloguing the powers of those around him. _Genesis._ The ability to create and manipulate white-hot fire. _Laguna._ The creation of bolts of lightning that could tear through walls with ease. _Squall._ Ice formed out of the air and water when he called on it. _Tseng._ Telekinesis so strong he could pick up and crush a human tank into a Frisbee with his mind. _Reno._ A shapeshifter who could merge Cetra with tiger, wolf and dragon into the ultimate fighting machine.

It was impossible to know Riku's special gift. He had never had any exposure to the energies of the Lifestream at all.

Cloud swallowed, and his mouth went dry. The evening meal had come and gone, and even as he thought it the harsh electric lights dimmed negligibly, the only thing that passed for night in this place. He didn't know why he was even considering it, what had put the idea in his head. Maybe it was comparing Sora's pale, dread-infused face with Riku's – older, but drawn with pain even in sleep. Maybe Sora's arrival had highlighted the harshness of Riku's life, had forced him to look past the silver hair and see that Riku was not his father – and did not have his strength.

Riku was not a Cetra warrior. He did not have the inner strength that came from centuries exposure to the Lifestream. He had no good memories to fall back on when he was taken into one of the 'breeding rooms'.

He had no good memories at all. Cloud could try and protect him from a distance and the effort was both noticed and appreciated, genuinely – but it was not what Riku most wanted. It was not what he needed.

Even Sora had had however many years with a loving family. Riku had been _born_ into this place. This hell.

Cloud's stomach – and heart – clenched hard.

He refused to look at anyone else as he got to his feet and walked across the floor to Riku's pallet. He could feel their eyes on him – shocked, surprised, neutral – and the weight of their gazes burned. But since he'd already called attention to himself by moving, he wasn't going to back down.

He thought he caught a glance of Laguna's eyes, soft and warm with quiet approval, as he lay down on Riku's thin mat – and pulled his sleeping son against his chest before closing his eyes himself.

Cloud might have no gift with which to defend his friends and his son. He might have fallen very, very far from the Beloved Consort he had once been. But he could give Riku this.


	4. Chapter 4

Zack made his way to the breeding grounds on a stomach empty of anything but nausea. He'd been excused from solitary last night in order to be questioned, and the combination of confusion, nerves, fear and disgust for what he would have to do once he reached the –grounds had kept him both from sleeping and from managing to eat anything.

Angeal was gone. When Zack hadn't reported for solitary Kadaj and Loz had gone looking for him – and found him out cold in the showers. The water had been turned off which made it seem unlikely that he had passed out from the whipping while washing off blood – and the theory had been confirmed when Kadaj discovered the spell holding Zack unconscious.

When questioned, Zack had been sure to filter out most of his and Angeal's last conversation – and fabricate the rest. Angeal had come and found him to heal his back, since everyone in the garrison knew that Zack's healing spells weren't the best. They had briefly discussed methods of working through 'unsavoury duties'. Then Angeal – there was no way to completely hide this – had had something like a nervous breakdown: he had been distressed and talking nonsense.

And then he had spelled Zack.

The whole thing made very little sense to anyone, but with Angeal vanished there was no one else to confirm or deny Zack's story. By the time the State investigators were done with him, there was only a couple of hours before Sephiroth called him to report for duty.

And here he was. It was slightly unnerving to be surrounded by silver – Sephiroth, Yazoo and Loz were on the rota for today – but Zack tried his best to ignore them, and to keep his thoughts from his face. All of the State Cetra were fully aware that Sephiroth's sons had been born from the program, and as far as anyone knew the three were perfectly well aware of it themselves. And yet their steps through the compound were full of restrained eagerness, a restless desire to get where they were going.

Zack hung back. He was afraid they would see how sick they made him.

He was trying to empty his mind of all thoughts, and by the time they reached the sliding doors – barred, like a prison or a cage – he had almost managed it.

A phone rang.

Scowling, Sephiroth plucked the compact black device from his pocket, flipping it open with a twist of his wrist and pressing it to his ear. Behind him, Loz looked towards the access pad longingly.

The General's expression darkened still further as the tinny voice barked at him. "Unacceptable. Tell Hojo I will meet with him later. A quick glance at my schedule would have told him that I'm –" He paused as the voice interrupted. Zack couldn't see his face, but he didn't like the change that seemed to come over the man. "Oh?" More listening. "In that case, I shall be there immediately. But if he is overestimating his success again, I shall not be pleased."

He snapped the phone shut as he turned to the waiting Cetra. His expression was not quite happy – indeed, he looked irritated, as if he were going to be missing a special treat – but he seemed excited.

"Business calls," he explained, stripping off his glove to press his hand to the pad. It glowed briefly as it scanned his prints and hand-shape, beeped once, and then the door slid open. "Seifer will be along in a few minutes to take my shift. I shall take his tomorrow." He paused, and looked at Zack. "Since you don't yet have a breeder of your own, you may borrow mine," he said graciously – but his lips twisted in a smirk, and his eyes were darkly mocking. "Subject 4 – the pretty little blonde. Come find me this afternoon and we'll discuss assigning you one of your own."

There was a strained silence until Zack realised what they were waiting for. "Thank you, sir," he said quietly.

Sephiroth dipped his head in acknowledgement, still wearing that smirk that made Zack want to gut him. "Oh, and if someone sees Kadaj before I do – please tell him to come see me. I may have to negotiate taking 13 off his hands." He was addressing more Yazoo and Loz this time, so Zack stayed silent and struggled to remain impassive. "The boy was truly sublime."

Loz sighed once Sephiroth had gone. "Kadaj won't be happy," he murmured to his brother as they waited for Seifer to catch up with them. The door to the –grounds was coded only to Sephiroth, the President, and the President's human son. If they left and closed the door behind them, Seifer would be left locked out. "He was so excited when Hojo said Riku was old enough to start."

Yazoo shrugged, apparently not overly interested, and the little group was silent until Seifer came around the corner, eyes bright with anticipation.

Zack pointedly ignored him – and tried to ignore the churning in his gut as they filed inside and shut the door behind them.

)0(

Cloud slept later than usual, but when static crackled over the intercom it was before anyone had brought their breakfast.

He sat bolt upright, feeling his blood turn to ice and his thoughts turn sharp as crystal as he went cold. Sessions never started before they'd been fed. *_Never_.

Around the room, he registered the other Cetra reacting to the change in routine, some opening their eyes blearily and others sitting up as quickly as he had, uselessly throwing back blankets so as to be unimpeded for any nasty surprises.

Tseng caught his eyes from the man's corner, and Cloud shrugged, wary.

"Subjects three, four and eight, please ready yourselves for visiting." The computerised voice announced over the intercom, and Cloud hissed, whipping his head to look for Laguna. The Healer's green eyes were wide with concern and outright worry, and he held Cloud's gaze for only a second before looking down at the sleeping Squall beside him.

Three and four were Reno and Cloud, but eight was Squall – and not only was it not Squall's day but there was no way he could be…used…again. Seifer had done a real number on him; Laguna had been up all night, wrapping his lover in the soft green glow of healing power, but Cloud knew it wasn't enough. Squall _needed_ those 24 hours before his next due 'visit'.

Cloud swore, and beside him Riku shifted in his sleep. Feeling guilty for disturbing him, Cloud awkwardly ran his hand over his son's silver hair, unused to expressing affection but grateful that Riku, at least, was going to have a break. Usually the boy only had to deal with Kadaj, but yesterday…Yesterday he'd had Sephiroth for the first time.

Cloud fought back the wave of fury and hatred that that thought elicited. But not today. Today Sephiroth must have decided he wanted Cloud back. And Cloud could deal with that. For Riku.

But Squall…

The door to their room slid open with the hiss of oiled metal, and despite his best intentions his stomach tightened when he caught sight of silver hair.

Except that Sephiroth wasn't there. 'Only' Yazoo and Loz, Sephiroth's 'twin' sons – bred at the same time, born at the same time, but from different stream-singers: both of whom had chosen death over returning to the life of a 'breeder' with their children ripped away from them.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Reno stiffen and his jaw lock. Reno was one of the 'shared' – someone who'd ended up claimed by more than one traitor, passed around on different days. But when Yazoo and Loz came in together, it meant they were going to have him together.

Cloud didn't envy him, but he'd experienced worse.

There was a flash of black hair behind them but Cloud ignored it without wondering too much over who it was: his attention was focussed on Seifer. Didn't the bastard realise that fucking around with Squall this soon after the last time might just kill him? Most of the State Cetra liked to play rough and cause pain, but Seifer took it to another level. The first time he'd taken Squall into one of the 'playrooms', he'd brought a knife – and spent hours making the brunette's blood run. Laguna had been able to heal most of the wounds – but not the one on his face.

Squall had wrestled the knife away and slashed a mirroring mark between Seifer's eyes. Brave, but not smart. Seifer still hadn't burned off the rage.

"Up and at'em, boy-toys," Seifer laughed, clapping his hands to get them moving. "You heard. Three, four, and eight – time to do your civic duty."

Cloud snarled softly.

Yazoo looked at him, smirking. "Come on, puppet. It's not so bad." His eyes followed the line of Cloud's body, curled protectively in front of Riku. "Or would you rather we took little brother?"

_Puppet._ The nickname made Cloud flinch, and he saw the pleasure in Yazoo's eyes. Oh no, none of the silver-haired brood had forgotten the days when Sephiroth _shared_ his favourite toy.

Careful to keep his body shielding his son, Cloud slipped from under the blanket, his face and eyes steely as he made his way towards the small knot of State Cetra. Reno fell into step beside him – just like when they'd been soldiers together, warriors – and both stood still, awaiting orders, a few feet away from the ones who'd come to collect.

"And him," Seifer snapped his fingers and pointed towards the still sleeping – _he's not sleeping, he's unconscious_ – Squall, half hidden behind Laguna.

Cloud turned cold eyes on him. "It is not his day. He needs the time to heal."

The other blonde made a dismissive gesture. "Don't give a flying fuck how much it hurts, sugar, he's _mine_. And he's gonna come here or I'm gonna go get him."

"Another session so soon might kill him." Cloud insisted, feeling the weight of responsibility – responsibility for these Cetra, his brethren, his brothers, _his men_ – on his shoulders and falling around him like a cloak. "He. Needs. Time." _It wouldn't be an issue if you could lay off the toys,_ he added silently, but knew better than to say.

From the look in Seifer's eyes, he could tell what Cloud was thinking.

And then he smirked. "I. Don't. Care," he drawled, pushing Cloud aside so hard the stream-singer stumbled and fell – he hadn't been expecting it, hadn't thought Seifer would dare touch him, not with Sephiroth's claim hanging over his head like a guillotine, and he hissed in pain as his bruised hip collided with the floor. "I don't have to listen to a fucking _breeder_."

Out of nowhere, a hand clamped on Seifer's shoulder from behind, white-knuckled with tension, and the blonde froze, held in place.

"Hojo was pretty explicit when he described the punishment waiting for whoever killed a subject, wasn't he?" A voice said conversationally.

Each and every one of the stream-singers in the room froze at the sound of that voice.

Cloud looked up – and felt the bottom of the world fall out from under him.

)0(

Seifer turned and sneered at him. "They're still Cetra, aren't they? Even breeders heal like _that_." He snapped his fingers in Zack's face, insolent and smirking. "Baby-boy isn't gonna go dying on me."

Zack raised an eyebrow, and looked past Seifer to where the brunette he'd indicated a moment ago lay on his pallet – obviously out of it – and fought to keep his face an indifferent mask. The poor bastard looked like he'd gone three rounds with a truck, and Seifer thought there was nothing to worry about?

He met Seifer's eyes again, and this time when he spoke his voice was the chill ice of a commanding officer giving an order. "Back off, Seifer. The breed – subject needs a doctor. This subject is your responsibility, so you will arrange for one. By the time the rest of us come out of our –" he nearly choked, "_sessions_, I want a medic in here or the subject transferred to some kind of facility. Am I understood?"

For a moment, it seemed as though the blonde was going to challenge him: he certainly looked as though he were considering it.

"I've been ordered to take a session," he muttered sulkily, but that was the sum of his objections.

Zack's gut twisted, but he gave no outward sign of it. "Then take someone else," he snapped, already feeling the weight of some other man's pain descending on his shoulders, guilt swirling hot and sickly in his stomach. He shoved Seifer away from him, and, forcing his temper back under control, he knelt to offer a hand up to the blonde breeder still sprawled out on the floor.

It was then he noticed the expression on the man's face – and, beyond it, the intense stillness of the room.

When he looked, every single one of the breeders was staring at him as if at a ghost.

Discomfited, Zack stopped looking and focussed on the blonde. He was used to turning away from things that made him uncomfortable, after all.

"Would you like a hand up?" He asked quietly, trying to smile. Instantly he regretted his tone; whatever kind of life he lived, this was a man, not a child, and Zack shouldn't treat him like one. But the blonde didn't take offence, only shakily clasped the hand that was offered and allowed Zack to pull him to his feet. Never once did those blue eyes leave his violet ones.

And they were beautiful eyes, he thought, staring at them. Like sapphires, or the ocean under a summer sky. But they should be glowing, dark blue stars shining with magic. Like his own. Not dulled and glassy. When they shone, they would light up like lamps, like the lighthouse guiding ships safely in to shore. Guiding them home.

Zack blinked. What a weird thought. And how did he know what the man looked like, well-fed on the Lifestream's magic? For all he knew the blonde had little power and would hardly glow at all.

He knew that the subjects weren't fed well, but were they normally this pale? And were you allowed to talk to them? Looking the man over, Zack had to resist the urge to be sick as it suddenly hit home what he was here to do. They wanted him to…he was supposed to…

"Subject 4?" He forced out, needing to check. _The pretty blonde._ Was this him?

The man nodded, jerkily, like a puppet with its strings cut.

Zack tried not to show his revulsion on his face. _Those eyes…I don't want to see pain in them. Or hate._ Something in him twisted, hard, at the thought.

"You're with me," he said, avoiding eye contact and wincing at how bright and cheery his voice sounded. "Seifer, get a doctor in here and then come after us. Loz, Yazoo – lead the way, yeah? I don't know what I'm doing, remember?"

He managed to avoid looking at anyone else as Sephiroth's sons collected their subject – a red-head with a long ponytail and black triangles tattooed under his eyes, the meaning of which niggled at him but wasn't something he could remember – and led them across the room and through another door.

He felt the weight of every pair of eyes on him as it shut behind them.

)0(

Reno managed to dodge Loz's wandering hands to hang back from the group, slipping into pace alongside Cloud.

His friend – his blood-sworn brother – didn't look good. Cloud's eyes were like stained glass, empty and emotionless like hollow beads, and he moved jerkily, numbly. He looked like a man who could have walked over hot coals and broken crystal and not felt the pain in his feet over the pain in his heart.

Only it wasn't pain. Reno looked towards the new arrival, the man with black spikes to rival Cloudster's.

_Zack_.

Oh, they knew who he was. Knew it the way they knew Sephiroth – though none had ever looked at Zack with wariness and mistrust…or fear and hatred.

Sephiroth was the older brother, destined to become the General of the Cetra army. He wielded his sword in the same way he used his arm; as if it were a part of him so natural it required no thought. If _savage-chi_ was an art, then Sephiroth was Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Picasso all rolled up into one. He was silver and midnight, with eyes and magic that blazed like the trail of a meteor.

And Zack…Zack was the younger brother. The one chosen by his people to be not General but King. The crown should have belonged to Sephiroth but he didn't want it and the people hadn't wanted him, not on the throne. They wanted _Zack_, loved _Zack_, with his heart of solid gold and the power of the sun in his smile, with his courage and laughter and the life that just _streamed_ out of him.

He was Stream-touched, and they all knew it. Chosen by the Goddess Herself. Wasn't it obvious, with his magic and his eternally glowing eyes? When he'd pulled the sword from the Stone, when the Goddess had given him the love of a Stream-singer – hadn't She made it unquestionably clear?

Reno clenched his fist. Sephiroth had ruined even that. Had turned Cloud from an innocent, an angel who brought smiles and laughter wherever he went, into a cold, hardened warrior with a scarred soul.

And Zack had died. Not then, but later – when what was left of the South Wind legion stood on the plains outside of Eskele, Zack had been in Camelot with the survivors from Trevalion, rallying morale and chafing at the necessity of not taking part in the coming battle. Like the handful of Cetra women – regardless of their ability with _savage-chi_ – he was too precious to be risked.

When Camelot went up in flames, they realised that he – and all the rest – would have been safer armed and on the battlefield.

_No survivors_. That was the message that had been carried to the legion. _They were all meant to have died._

But that was Zack. Reno had spent a time or two assigned to the royal family and he _knew_ that was the Heir.

_The King now,_ he realised suddenly. _Lazard is dead. Zack was never crowned but if we were anything more than a rag-tag bunch of scum and slaves, he'd be King._

And if Zack had survived…

_No._ He crushed that thought before it could fully form. _No. Don't let yourself believe that, hope for it, pray for it. If it's not true, all these years will have been for nothing and that whisper of a wish will destroy you when it's broken. Don't even wonder if anyone else survived._

But despite himself, despite Cloud's descent into shock, he felt the first stirring of hope: the same sensation he felt in the Lifestream as Winter melted into Spring. Zack was here. Their _King_ was here. It had to be some kind of plan, some long-laid plot that would finally, _finally_ set them free.

When Yazoo and his brother beckoned, Reno was almost smiling.

)0(

Zack closed the door with unwarranted gentleness, unsure of what to do next and trying not to succumb to the sickness writhing in his stomach and chest.

He lay his hand flat on the white metal of the soundproofed door. The whole room was padded, a white box lined with…whatever they made soundproofing from. And bare: there was nothing but a cot in one corner. Evidently, if one of the State Cetra wanted extra entertainment, they had to bring it with them.

He swallowed the nausea that coiled up his throat at the thought of what kind of entertainment the other Cetra loyal to Sephiroth might choose to indulge in.

He could feel the blonde's presence behind him. Zack stayed with his forehead almost pressed against the door, trying to decide on a course of action. There was no way to leave this room before he and the breeder had had sex; once they left, the blonde would be…inspected, and there was no getting around that.

But he couldn't just…what? Throw the man onto the bed? _No!_ Nothing – he just – no. He couldn't even imagine forcibly removing the clothes that hung off the man's frame, and had no idea of even the mechanics of what he'd do after that. Pin his arms? Would he need to be restrained? Was there lube in here somewhere, and how could you prepare someone who wasn't willingly in your bed?

Sharp ears caught the brush of bare feet against the tiled floor, the sound somehow hesitant – just as the brush of palms against his shoulder blades, warm through his shirt, seemed light and shy, simultaneously wary and longing.

Zack closed his eyes, but otherwise he didn't move. He was more than willing to let the blonde make the first move, selfishly glad that the burden of action had been lifted from his shoulders. It wasn't a weight he could bear. And when he kept still, the hands grew more confident, pressing both harder and softer as they stroked over his shoulders, the callused, deft fingertips trailing warmth over his muscles as they unknotted the tension in them, so sweet and perfect that Zack caught his breath at the sensation.

The inhalation carried with it the man's scent – his physical and psychic signature. It was nothing so simple as a floral perfume, nor so easily dismissed; it was light and faint, as if it had been dampened or muffled, but it was…what? A rich, heady musk that heated his blood with every breath Zack took, a smell that made him imagine sweat and the flash of light on a blade, black leather, and the wind that could be a Summer breeze or a Summer storm. Something wild and strong and exciting.

_And beneath it…_Hidden beneath that rougher scent, but growing stronger with every second spent massaging Zack's shoulders and upper back, was something else. Something softer, gentler and warmer. Like honey, and the earth after the rain…and magic.

Despite himself – despite everything – Zack could feel his blood heating as that scent wrapped around him, as those hands gently turned the soreness in knotted muscles into warm relief.

"I swore I'd never lie under you," the other man whispered suddenly.

And Zack's not sure if he means Zack personally, or the State Cetra in general. Maybe it's some thing Sephiroth allows him, some small concession to the endless rapes, but with the heat flowing softly through his once-aching muscles and that scent breathing into his blood, Zack finds it harder and easier to think about it. His magic feels wilder and hotter and he can see the glow of his eyes, the light spilling onto the door in front of his face. The words slip off his tongue like silver – no, like gold.

"What about above me?"

The blond's hands stilled, but Zack can feel the man's breath on the back of his neck, and in the way that all warriors – at least, all Cetra ones – can understand another's body he knows it's not fear that's caused the tense stillness behind him.

Or what keeps the blond from pulling away, when Zack turns around and kisses him.

It is easy. There is no pain here, nothing forced upon an unwilling participant or taken from them. Zack has no desire to be rough, thrilled enough by the tough, chapped lips of the blond man he only knows as a number. There is a moment of hesitance, when the smaller man is tense and unsure – and then a melting, a casting-aside of fears and regrets and even amidst this, this heated slide of lips and tongue and teeth, caressing hands that tug at clothes with growing hunger and the glittering sparks of Zack's magic leaping and twining over their skins, Zack feels awed, and humbled, at the trust this stranger places into his hands. Because he knows in his gut that this man does not gasp at the touch of Sephiroth's hand, does not tangle his fingers in Sephiroth's hair and kiss the General harder in response to pleasure – if Sephiroth bothers to give his breeder pleasure at all.

For whatever reason, this man trusts him, and Zack has no intention – none at all – of hurting him. The savage intensity building in his chest doesn't hunger for pain: he wants to wrap his arms around the smaller body and claim him, protect him, take him away from here. He wants to see those blue eyes alight with the power of the Lifestream, wants to see the wind running through that hair. And if that is impossible, then he wants to make this stream-singer's body burn and sing for him.

And he does. It is so easy, and so good, and so _right_, that he does not question the blond's desperation to get him unclothed: Zack knows the feeling. When they tumble onto the bed, hands roving, still kissing, fighting to breathe without letting the other go – with his magic singing in his blood and his eyes, the violet glow falling on the blond's creamy skin – when he hears that soft, aching cry as subject 4 straddles Zack's hips and slides down on his cock – when they move, and kiss, and clutch at each other –

It feels like coming home after a long, long time.


End file.
